Women should be offered a caesarean if counselling from a doctor fails

Women should be offered a caesarean if counselling from a doctor fails

September 9th, 2011

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Experience (Nice) is working on guidelines to prompt doctors in England to attempt to try to talk women out of wanting a caesarean operation to deliver their baby if they have concerns about giving birth naturally. Despite a quarter of all births already being carried out by caesarean, women do not have the automatic right to demand the costly procedure if there is no medical reason for it.

‘Nice’ estimates that emergency caesareans are twice as costly at £3,042 compared to natural births at £1,512, with planned C-sections slightly more expensive at £2,369.

The guidelines add that if the counselling attempts have failed then expectant mothers should then be given the chance to have a caesarean.

The news is to be formalised in November, with campaigners and some clinicians welcoming the move. One consultant obstetrician, Patrick O’Brien said, “I do not think it changes practice a whole lot. It is formalising what was informally happening in most hospitals.”

Some middle-class mothers have been accused of being ‘too posh to push’, with the rate of caesarean births having doubled over the past 30 years to 25 per cent of all births. However, research suggests that the procedure is carried out on medical advice in many cases and the increase could be linked to a rise in older women (who are at greater risk of having trouble during labour), having babies.

In England, the caesarean rate is much higher than the World Health Organisation’s recommended figure of 15 per cent.